Little Red Sled: Fun racing for girls

Ars takes a look at a sweet new game for girls.

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If you have a little girl or if you're a little girl at heart, you may want to consider springing for the new Little Red Sled racing game. It costs just two bucks and, frankly, it's darling. It's an interactive racing game where you perform aerial stunts, collect tokens, and otherwise do all the things that Real Men� do in their sports games. But Little Red Sled is sweeter and cuter.

I mean, seriously, this game makes Hello Kitty look butch.

To play Little Red Sled, you start by choosing a course. At first, you have access to just one. Winning courses unlocks new ones so the game has a progression of tasks and expertise. The first course is marked on the mountain with a circle with a question mark in it.

It speaks to my dimness that it took me forever to realize this was a course option and not a button that led to a help screen. Once I figured that out, I soon was sliding down my first course. In Little Red Sled, the question mark means "untried," a crown means "conquered," and an empty circle means "unmastered." Developer Keith Shepherd told me in an e-mail that this is a feature that confused many users and they'll soon be adding a splash screen to explain the trail map in an app update.

The actual gameplay is just fine. You tilt to steer, shake to perform tricks, and theoretically tap to brake. You can't choose which trick to perform, but they all seem equally fun. I liked the little ramps that you could jump off of, collecting gift tokens, and making little in-air spins.

Unfortunately, the game has a problem differentiating between braking and pausing, so often I seemed to trigger the one I didn't mean to. It turns out that the top third of the screen is currently used for pausing and the bottom two thirds for braking. Again, this is a feature that the developers say is being addressed. Aside from the braking issue, the riding is just challenging enough to keep the interest of an adult and surely that of a child. The ride is fun and the motion graphics work well.

The game offers 13 levels of play ranging from Green Circle (training/easy courses) to Blue Square (intermediate), and Black Diamond. However, with my Skill Level resting at "Cottontail", I'm pretty confident in saying that most players will not reach the end of play within just hours or days. The game ramps up in difficulty as you go, and it mixes up the goals to provide new challenges as well as harder game play.

The music that accompanies the game is perfectly reasonable but I did find that after a while it started getting on my nerves. The easy-to-access preferences (click the left bunny at the main menu) let me mute the music without affecting any of the normal game sound effects.

For two bucks, Little Red Sled makes a great addition to your iPhone app collection. Although the gameplay is suitable for boys as well as girls, I think you'll find getting boys to play it is a long shot. Or if they do, their dads may disapprove. Perhaps the makers will take the exact same game and "toughen it up" with more boy-friendly graphics to find an even wider audience.

Official Ars Warning: Any man caught playing this must wait 7 years after the date of infraction prior to renewing his Real Man� license. This mandatory suspension applies to all holders of the Y-chromosome, regardless of base orientation with exceptions for those who are just Really Really Secure�